


Six Lines

by Najanaja



Category: Mad Max 1979, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 06:39:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4866875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Najanaja/pseuds/Najanaja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bubba at a disco.  Disco Bubba.</p><p>Warning for misanthropy with an emphasis on misogyny.  Scrubbers, you know?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Lines

The club hasn't updated in a decade. In the darkness, a disco ball is spinning, and luminous spots are fluttering on Bubba Zanetti's black suit. They're like silver moths, flying at a headlamp on a night road, smearing a man's visor with sparkling fragments of filth. The pale man brushes at his chest and scowls: at himself, at the surroundings, and at the two young women.

Bubba steps up to the table where they sit, as the redhead is standing. That's good. He won't have to see much of her bouncy chest, slippery damp in the hot club, and steaming with perfume. Her eye shadow is a stark purple, and her lipstick is mauve, and both tones sour her complexion. He'd love to clean her with steel wool, but she'd still be dirty. She's one of those.

Bubba knows not all women are the same. A few have the heart of the Madonna, and there's some as brave as Joan of Arc. Then there's the majority. They're whores. Covetous whores, soft and whimpering whores, bitter and malign whores. A tapestry of whores, whores, and whores. The disco is full of them: sparkling fragments of filth.

He wouldn't be here, but it's policy. “Never go alone.' He had to come with Diabando and Johnny the Boy. The boy is useless, generally. He's dangerously sloppy here, in the company of women and alcohol. He's been trading his coke for kisses and more. Now Johnny is lolling in the booth, smiling, and the women have finished with him. Bubba won't think about that. He's never putting his legs under that table.

He can collect Johnny now, but there's still Diabando. The man has given two hours and a fortune in shots to a young girl in a silver lamé tube top. Diabando's not her taste, though. The girl is sending signals to the redhead, who is rising to respond. Bubba won't allow a scene. He glowers at the redhead and her dark-haired mate.

The redhead scowls. “Who are you? Are you Bronze? What do you want? We're gone! Come on, Emmie.”

“Sit back and shut up, the pair of you.” 

“We've done nothing. We don't even know this jackass.” The scrubber flicks her hand at Johnny the Boy. He stops playing with his white scarf, and heaves himself up, throwing an arm over her shoulders. 

“Hey!” The redhead shoves him back into the corner. 

“Hey!” Johnny squawks back, and laughs.

The brunette is staring at Bubba's black uniform.

“You don't belong here. MFP, that's road patrol. What is this, some kind of sting?”

“Yeah, that's right. I'm Special Branch.”

“This guy, Johnny,” The redhead yelps, “He's a bikie. He's Armalite. He told us. But we don't know him. Hey, we just want to go. We want to get our mate and go.” 

“You keep your trap shut, and you'll be OK. It's her we want.” Bubba doesn't want her; she's a scrubber no matter how fresh her body. At the moment, he doesn't want Johnny, a bubble-head punk with a big mouth. However, Diabando will insist on taking them both. 

“Bubba, man, be cool.” Johnny says. Now the whores have his name.

The redhead rallies. “Listen, Bubba Bronze, or whoever you are. You can't stop us. You can't touch us.”

Bubba carefully opens his jacket to show the holstered Wesson. He knows he can't properly smile. It's a stiff curl of lips, and it pulls oddly at his eyes, too. His true smile can only happen when he's surprised or relaxed. He hasn't allowed that in years. So when he smiles now, both the girls, and Johnny, flinch back in the booth.

“I told you...to shut up.”

Johnny slides out of the booth. He wags a finger sharply at Bubba. “Not cool, man. I'm gone.”

The boy stalks past Bubba, toward Diabando, who's moving his target in the direction of the door. This is good. Bubba has done it; he won't have to face Toecutter's dour gaze. He won't be told to go back, only to find that Johnny's lost himself in some squat. He won't spend a cold night watching the roads, waiting for the sound of the boy's bike. 

If he rides hard, he'll be back at camp before Diabando and Johnny. He'll have a moment alone with his mate. Some soft words and touches, if the man is very low. Sometimes Toecutter seems to forget the loss. Then he brightens, as though he thinks he's just fighting a mood. That could happen tonight, and Bubba wants to be there. If Toecutter smiles at him, that will be a surprise, and he'll smile back.

Bubba turns to go, and the redhead stands, pulling the brunette by the hand. The pale man spins and steps up to them, a short knife in his right hand. He shows them the blade, and clicks it back in the handle. Bubba grips the redhead's arm, putting the hilt in her ribs. He moves her, and she moves her mate, into the back hall. This is shadowy hole, where things can happen quiet. The women would know. They're tramps. 

He'll bail them up here while Diabando and Johnny move out. While he guards them, he has to look at them. They've gone wet-eyed, making their purple and blue eye-shadow more offensive. So he looks at the brunette's top, a black lace shell, one tasteful thing. It's too bad she's not a large woman. It would be something for the box at the station house. With bitter wit, he thinks of it as his hope chest.

“Bubba! Bubba!” Johnny runs to Bubba's shoulder and gasps alcohol fumes in his face. The man takes a fistful of the boy's scarf, and shoves the young scag into the wall. Johnny gapes at him, round-eyed, and then his pink lips curve into a sunny smile. 

“Hey Bubba, quit playing. We got...we got trouble. There's Bronze coming in, so we got to...we got to...Diabando says we got to...I think, you know, we should cool it. Cool it, man.”

Bubba pushes Johnny at the brunette, as Diabando rushes past with his conquest. Bubba inhales, and bows his face into the redhead's cleavage. The flesh is fuming with fragrance and scented powder. He bobs as though he's nuzzling into her. 

The boy has caught on, that is, he's fervently sucking and licking at the brunette's lips and neck. Bubba winces as Johnny's hands slip onto the lace shell, pressing and twisting it. There's a fantasy murdered. 

Bubba must endure this. It's a reason to hide his face, a reason to skulk in the hall, while the Bronze settle at the bar. They're in sight now: a raucous blond and a sober, dark-haired man. The dark one peers down the hall as he passes. 

Bubba presses into the scrubber's slippery flesh, and then warm liquid rolls down his left temple. He pulls back, looking up at the woman's face. She snarls at him with her mauve mouth. She has spat on him. 

“You bitch.” He reminds her of the knife, grinding the hilt into her ribs. Another set of scrubbers is passing behind them now, so Bubba dips back into her cleavage. 

“Find a room!” A tart giggles at him. She and her mates push open the door to the ladies' toilet. They squeal and laugh. “Oh, so it's taken!” 

Diabando has the sense to stop. Bubba hears him grunt, and stand with a scrape and click of his boots. He whispers something.

“Oooh, that's sweet.” One of the scrubbers cat-calls. “You gonna kiss her mouth now, too?”

“I'll kiss yours, baby. And then you can finish the job for me.”

The tramp giggles. “Don't stop on my account.”

“I never would.”

“OK, OK!” Bubba shouts. Johnny turns to him, alarmed and confused. Diabando pushes through the clot of scrubbers, followed by his blushing partner, whose silver top is reflecting the pink of her flesh.

“I'll go first,” he offers. 

Bubba nods. He'll send the boy next, and then he'll follow. He will be last. It is no surprise.

**Author's Note:**

> That complete muppet is at the disco, too. And Diabando, because it had to be somebody's idea. Also Goose and Max.
> 
> This happens before Clunes, but not long before. I think Goose is celebrating because he got his cast off. So, a few week following Anarchie Road.


End file.
